


Normal Doesn't Suit Them

by LemonyZest



Series: Normalcy is Overrated [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Chuck is God, Dad of the year award goes to nobody because they are all terrible fathers, Dean is a conflicted bisexual, Everyone has daddy issues and Chuck does NOT want to deal, F/M, Female Sam Winchester, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Multi, Pining, Post-Mark of Cain, Team Free Will, all writing happens at 3AM, everyone loves sam, them's the rules
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2019-09-28 00:04:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17172026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LemonyZest/pseuds/LemonyZest
Summary: Sam and Dean have survived long enough to realize that they're never going to be normal. Sam has just managed to free Dean from the Mark of Cain after he murdered Death, but there's now the small problem of the untold evil that has been unleashed onto the world as a result. Which is fine. She can fix it. Probably. Maybe.Between memories from the cage beginning to resurface in her dreams and Dean's conflicting feelings about their newest enemy it's going to be weird and difficult. But weird and difficult is just another Tuesday, and it's only going to get stranger from here.





	1. Chapter 1

Sam is down on her knees in front of him, hair hanging over her face. Dean is suddenly and vividly reminded of when they were kids. The image of Sam as her ten year old self, unruly curls always blocking her face from view. She’d still had freckles then, her face round and skin pale. She’d still been innocent. She lifts her head, hair rolling to the sides to frame her face, breaking the illusion. 

The Sam looking up at him is a far cry from the child she had once been, the child he failed to protect. She is tall, her hair long, but no longer unmanageable. She has a cut on her lip and her left eye is swelling rapidly from their skirmish a few moments earlier. Despite the injuries she does not look weak. Her shoulders are squared, her jaw set. Her hands rest on her knees. She meets his eyes and holds his gaze. 

She doesn’t look scared or angry. Her eyes are hard and determined. Dean realizes she’s already come to terms with this, with dying. She’s accepted that he is going to kill her. She’s ready. He thinks he might be sick. 

Dean looks at her, a knot he can’t swallow down is lodged in his throat. The Mark is burning hot against his skin, a terrible contrast to the cold scythe in his hand. It feels smooth, frigid, and powerful. It feels final. 

Death is standing behind him patiently. Waiting. Dean feels hyper aware of everything in the room, down to the smallest swirling wisp of dust. 

He breaks eye contact. Can’t bear to look her in the eyes when he’s about to kill her. His fingers fidget on Death’s scythe. It’s too heavy. 

“Close your eyes.” He just wants her to close her eyes. Please don’t watch him break every promise he’s ever made her. Every promise to watch out for his little sister, to protect her, to never hurt her. 

His eyes find their way back to her face. She’s watching him still. A tear slips from the corner of her eye, zigzags down her face along the line of her cheek and disappears into her hair. Sam doesn’t close her eyes. 

“Sammy, close your eyes.” His voice breaks over her name. He’s begging. He can’t do this with her watching him. 

She blinks a few times and swallows. Shaking her head slightly, she looks away, “Wait.” Sam reaches into her inside jacket pocket, remembering that she has their old family photos. The ones from before she can remember; the ones that remind Dean of his brief childhood. “Take these.” Dean should have them. They’ve always meant so much more to him than to her. “And one day, when you find your way back, let these be your guide.” 

She places the pictures, images up, on the cracked floorboards. The faded faces of their mother and the children neither of them got to be look up at them. 

“Let these remind you what it was to be good.” She looks back to her big brother. “Let them remind you what it was to love.” Sam smiles up at him.

Dean shakes his head ever so slightly. Sam’s always had too much faith in him. He’s not that strong. He’s weak. 

Death takes a step forward and speaks to him. “It is for family you must proceed, Dean.” 

Dean’s eyes fall to the pictures, laying on the ground between him and Sam. 

“To be what you are, to become what you have become, is a stain upon their memory. Do it, or I will.”

Sam’s eyes find his again, and he knows she’s waiting. The Mark demands a life and the scythe weighs heavy in his hands. 

“Forgive me.” Dean says.

Sam closes her eyes. 

The next moment the scythe’s blade is singing through the air, but it does not strike her. Sam blinks her eyes open a second later to see the blade sink into Death’s body, the tip of the blade pointing out the opposite side. Death’s gaze is on Dean, his face lightly shocked. Then he crumbles away into dust, his weapon clattering to the floor and coming to rest in a pile of ash. 

Dean looks to Sam, and Sam looks to Dean. Both their eyes are wide with shock. Dean moves first, stepping forward and offering his hand to Sam. She grips his forearm, her hand resting over the Mark, and pulls herself up from the floor. 

“You ok?”Dean asks. 

The question is sincere enough, but Sam wants to scream and laugh and punch him because it feels like the dumbest question anyone has ever asked. She’s still shaken, reeling from the fact that Dean just murdered Death incarnate instead of killing her. She settles for an only slightly mocking, “I’ll live.” She nods, processing the statement. She’ll live. Holy shit. “You?”

“Fantastic.” Dean is tense and he’s shaking slightly. “I think I just killed Death.”

Sam laughs because what else can she do at this point? Dean grins at her. Neither of them have any clue what comes next, but the absurdity of it all is just plain comedic at this point. Sam moves to sit down on one of the bar stools and Dean starts pulling together a drink. Sam merely shakes her head. She can’t blame him. She could use a drink right now, too. 

Then there’s a sound, almost like thunder but not quite right. Unnatural. It sounds wrong in a way that makes a chill run down her spine. Something bad has happened, but she doesn’t know what. 

Dean looks at her. “You hear that?” 

She nods, standing up from her seat. Dean steps forward, and a bright light comes down from the ceiling like lightning and strikes him. Sam raises her arms to shield her eyes from the light as it drowns out the shadows in the bar. The backs of her eyelids light up red.

She blinks them open to see Dean clutching his forearm, his face contorted with pain. Electricity crackles and sparks visibly. Dean takes a step back and knocks over a bar stool, his other arm swipes out to try and catch himself, sending the drink he’d been making crashing down with him. Another strike of lightning and Dean is left on the ground with a broken glass and a puddle of alcohol. 

Dean holds out his arm, digging his fingers into the empty skin, eyes searching. Suddenly Sam understands what has happened. The Mark is gone. Rowena had cast the spell, and it had worked. She lets out a sigh of relief. This nightmare is finally over. 

She wonders what their next nightmare will consist of. What were the consequences of this? What was the price of Dean’s soul?

It didn’t matter. She'd gladly pay it.


	2. Out of the Darkness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean tries to get a handle on The Darkness thing and decide what to do now that he's free of the Mark.

Dean came to with Sam shaking his shoulder roughly. “Hey! Hey!” Dean shook her hand off. “You okay?” She asked.

“Yeah, yeah.” Dean climbed to his feet feeling a bit unsteady. They didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger, so that was nice. There was something wrong though. “Where’s the car?” 

They’d both been in the car when The Darkness hit. Then he’d been… somewhere else. Here? And there had been that woman. None of this made sense.

“About a mile that way.” Sam gestured back over the hill, presumably in the direction she’d come from. “You sure you’re alright?” Her forehead creased in that way it did when she worried. 

“I’m fine.” He told her, a bit irritated with the question. He was just freaking peachy. 

“You sure you don’t need to lay back down and get some beauty sleep in this field of flowers? It’s okay if you do. Prince Charming will find you and break the curse.” Sam had a shit-eating grin stretched across her face. Of course she’d need to comment on the fact that she found him sleeping in a field of flowers. He'd probably give her twice as much grief if the tables were turned.

“I hate you so much.” Dean said. He shrugged off his jacket and shook out several flower petals. “Bitch.”

“Jerk.” Sam turned to start walking back to the car. It was probably a good idea. Dean’s not sure what time it is, but he doesn’t want to be stuck trying to work on the car in the dark. As they started down the hill Sam asked, “So you don’t remember getting here?” She sounded more curious than concerned now. Which was reassuring in a way despite the fact that it was probably more of a comment on how weird Sam was and less of a statement about how worrying their current situation should have been.

He shook his head. He didn't remember leaving the car or how he got to the field. He remembered the woman. The Darkness. Dean bit the inside of his cheek, mulling over what little information he had. Better tell Sammy. 

“She saved me.” 

Sam looked at him, inclining her head to say, ‘Go on’. 

“The Darkness. She saved me.”

“Who did what now?” Sam asked, incredulity dripping from her words. 

“Shut up. Don’t make me say it again.” 

Sam huffed out. “The Darkness.” She wrinkled her nose, and turned on him. “The Darkness, the Darkness?

“Is there another darkness?”

“So what? She just told you she was the Darkness?” 

“No, Sam, she was wearing a nametag.” He snapped back. 

She held up her hands in mock surrender. “Alright, whatever. The Darkness saved you.” Her hands dropped back down to her sides. “Why?” 

Dean swallowed as he went over what she’d said to him. 

“She…” He closed his eyes, quirked his head. This was so wrong. “She thanked me.”

“For?” Sam shook her head, probably wracking her oversized brain for what The Darkness could be grateful to Dean for. 

“For setting her free.”

“You didn’t do jack shit to set her free. I did all the heavy lifting and Rowena cast the damn spell.” Sam said. She was clearly irritated.

“That’s what you’re upset about? That The Darkness didn’t leave you a Thank You card?”

Sam shrugged, visibly still peeved. “So what? She feels like indebted to you?”

“I guess. I don’t know. She’s The Darkness; does she feel anything?”

“Is that all she said? Just Thanks?” Sam asked. 

They’ve reached the parking lot again, sooner than Dean expected. He nodded to himself, “No, yeah. She was weird. There was like this intensity about her y’know? Like this laser focus. But not a big talker, no.” He waved his hand as he answered, dismissing the question. 

“So we know nothing.” Sam surmised. She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair until they snagged in a knot. She pulled her hand out, ignoring the the tangle in favor of fixing Dean with a pointed Bitch Face. 

“We know what she looks like, and we know she’s evil. The real question is what does she know?” Dean jabs a finger at Sam before turning to walk the short rest of the way to Baby. “She’s been locked up since the beginning of time. Does she even know what a cheeseburger is?” As he reached the car he turned to Sam again. “Most importantly we know we set her free, and we’re gonna lock her back up no matter what it wakes.” He lowered himself into the car and shut the door with a slam. 

Then he sat there, wet his lips, and took a deep breath. “Dammit.” 

“You gonna just let me get into the car?” He asked Sam as he climbed out and eyed the back wheel that was stuck in a muddy pot hole.

Sam shrugged, “You were on a roll.”

It doesn’t take long for them to get the wheel out and Baby is ready to go. It doesn’t take long for them to run into trouble once they got on the road to the nearest town either. 

Dean pulled to a stop, Sam already unbuckling her seatbelt, and they climbed out at the same time, guns ready. It’s a road work site, or it was. It’s a massacre now, dead bodies strewn violently about. Sam checked a crashed SUV for survivors, but just shakes her head back to him. 

“The Hell happened here?”

As if in answer to his question they hear a car door nearby. “Hello?” His shoulders are tense and aching. Everything hurts if he’s being honest but to hell if he’s ever let that stop him from picking a fight. His finger stays glued to the trigger, ready.

A man, one of the construction workers, came walking around from the other side of a truck. Sam and Dean instinctively turn to face him, guns raised. He wasn't right, not even close, There are thick, bulging black veins creeping up his necks and stretching onto his face. His eyes are dark. He looks human, but there’s a wrongness about him, about the way he moves. He’s focused, dangerous. 

“Well that’s not a happy sight.” The man looks at them. He’s not blinking and it’s psyching Dean out like crazy. “Easy, buddy, keep it cool, ‘til we figure this out, alright?” The man isn’t listening, or maybe not understanding. It doesn’t matter which though because he was coming toward them. The man wasn't running but was moving fast enough to still be a bit alarming, and Dean really hoped this guy wasn't human. He was so sick of killing people, please let this be a monster. 

“You’re kind of narrowing my options here.” He said. Please don’t make him kill another human being, please. No more killing. 

“We don’t even know what he is.” came Sam’s voice from behind him. She’s trying to reason with him. ‘Don’t shoot him, please. You don’t have the Mark anymore, you don’t have to kill anyone anymore’ but when has that ever been true? His finger felt stuck to the trigger, but he couldn't pull it, didn't want to. 

A gunshot rang out, and the man dropped to the street. Dean would have been relieved if he weren’t painfully aware that him nor Sam had pulled the trigger. It took him less than a second to find the source of the shot, a woman behind one of the cars wearing a sheriff's uniform. His gun retrained on her just as quickly as his eyes found her. 

“Weapons on the ground! Slowly.” Her voice was hard, but not authoritative. Not demanding. But hell, she looked like an officer and she had a gun on them and Dean’d be damned if they shot a cop today. Besides, she probably had some semblance of an idea as to what was happening here. More than they knew, at least. 

Dean lowered his gun and kept his hands raised up, trying to give off as much of a nonthreatening vibe as he can muster. He knew Sam was following his lead, but her anxious energy was distracting. Not that he could blame her. Having a new enemy playing by new rules was stressful. Not having a weapon in their hands was stressful. But they weren't in any immediate danger and the lady officer could be useful. 

“Let me see some skin.” 

“Huh?” He heard Sam the same moment he said, “What?”

“Is this like a Magic Mike moment or-”

Sam cut him off, mind working a mile a minute, “You think we’re one of those? We don’t even know what these are.” 

The veins, duh. She wanted to check them for veins. 

“I need to know. Show me your throats.” She cocked her rifle. Lady seemed more scared than anything else.

“Ok, alright.” Dean accommodated, pulling down his collar to bare his neck for her. He glanced behind him to see Sam tossing her hair behind her shoulders before doing the same to show off her neck and upper chest. 

The lady officer smiled like she just won the lottery before all but collapsing onto the hood of the car. Dean scooped up his gun the second she was no longer threatening bodily harm. 

There’s blood on her shirt from some kind of injury. All Dean could think was that if this is like some evil virus like the Croatoan virus all over again then it could be contagious, she could be infected. 

“Bad guys?” He asked, gesturing to the blood. 

“Rebar. I took cover and fell.”

“Okay.” Good. Probably not infected. Or whatever this is. “Ok, why don’t you tell us what’s going on here?” 

She hesitated a moment, and Dean pulled out his FBI badge, flashing it only long enough for her to catch the bold letters reading ‘FBI’ and his face on the badge. He had no idea what name was on this one. 

She gave a nod before launching into what sounded like a report to a higher officer. She spoke quickly and shook as she went, fumbling over her words and barely making sense.

“How long you been on the job?”

“Three weeks.” 

Fuck. “Ok, well I’m Dean; this,” he gestured to Sam, “is Sam. Just breath, okay?” Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck. Of course they’d get stuck in this shit situation with a rookie officer. “Alright. Speak plain; just tell us what happened here.”

And she did. The road crew went crazy and killed the other civilians. She fired a warning shot, but they didn’t stop. She killed them. 

Sam had gone back over to the body of the man they’d put down. Dean shook his head. It was wrong, it was all wrong. They weren’t human. 

“I can stitch that up, but it’s gonna be ugly.” Dean waved a hand at injury. It was still bleeding. She needed to get it fixed up and soon. “You got a hospital around here?”

She gave a stilted nod. “Up the road.”

The drive to the hospital was short, but the state of it was cause for concern. And guns. Yes. The guns were definitely coming in with them. 

Dean climbed out of the car and went to load up a bag with weapons from the trunk. 

“So what are you thinking?” Sam asked as she went to right a collapsed wheelchair and prod at one of the corpses strewn in front of the emergency room entrance.

“I don’t know what to think.” Which was exactly why he was grabbing everything. 

“It’s gotta be her, right? The Darkness?”

Dean peered over to her as he spoke. “I don’t know, Sam. I mean we’re okay.”

“Maybe it was the smoke, Dean. I was in the car, but the road crew- they were outside. They were exposed.” Sam pauses and Dean can see her trying to decide how to say the next part. She shakes her head instead. “You saw those men. That wasn’t human. Whatever did that to them, it wasn’t natural.”

“So what? The smoke mutated them?”

Sam shrugged and then nodded. 

“Sure. Y’know what? I killed Death today. It’s a goddamn free for all- anything can happen!” He slammed the trunk shut. 

Why was it that whenever one shitty thing in their lives got worked out something worse always managed to come along to replace it? 

“Whatever. Let’s just get her fixed for now. Evil smoke mutants come next, alright?”

“Sounds like a plan.” Sam rolled the wheelchair she’d been manhandling before over to the car. 

As they wheeled her into the hospital, Sam paused. “I’m gonna take a look around. Why don’t you get her sewn up?”

Dean nodded. Sure. Sam was actually better at stitching people up, but she took twice as long and this wasn’t the time for meticulous needlework. No, better get her taken care of quick so that they could all stay on their toes. Something bad was bound to happen, and Dean wanted to have as many able bodies as possible. 

Sam went off down the other way while Dean rolled them off into an office.

Finding what he needed was easy. “This is gonna hurt like a son of a bitch.” He told her. He pulled her up onto the exam table and lifted up her shirt enough to get at the wound, first to clean it, then to stitch. She hissed as he worked on her. 

“I knew those boys. I knew their families.” 

“You did what you had to do.” He tried not to think about how fucked up it is for him to be justifying murder so clinically.  
“You aren’t trained to shoot your friends. I panicked. I could have done something different- maybe reasoned with them.”

“They weren’t weren’t your friends and they weren’t your neighbors. They weren’t human. They were a threat.” He tried to focus on his needlework. God, it looked sloppy. Sam would have an aneurism if she saw. “Anybody could have panicked. Not anybody could have done what you did.”

She shook her head slightly, careful not to move too much. “This is supposed to be saving people.”

“Yeah, well… It sounds better on paper, huh?” He clenched his jaw, tried to keep his thoughts current. 

Saving people, hunting things, when had that stopped being their thing? When had it turned into killing things, making deals with monsters, and screwing over the planet for themselves? When had saving people stopped being their first priority?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is like the first half of Season 11 episode 1. A lot of plain old recap going on here, but I promise that is not going to be what this fic is. I'm not here to recap episodes. I kind of wanted to get a handle on Dean's head space moving forward and he's always a fun character to write. The rest of this episode is going to be covered with Sam I think. And that means cage flashbacks start soon! Which, as far as her visions go, this is going to diverge a lot from canon. So Sam and Dean are both going to be in a pretty substantial state of confusion from here on out. I look forward to less recap and more fic writing in the future.   
> This has not been Beta'd, but I will be editing down the road once I get more story out, so please forgive any glaring errors. 
> 
> Anyway comments are highly sought after by moi so let me know what you want to see moving forward/what you like so far! Drop a kudos if you appreciate fic writers!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam tries to help.

Splitting up had been her idea in the first place. Partially because doing a perimeter check felt like it had to be done, but largely because she had to get away from Dean and company for a minute. Her head was all mixed up and she’d always found routine, methodical things to help clear her mind. She figured it was why Dean worked on the Impala or cleaned their weapons stash whenever shit went down. So, perimeter check. Something routine and simple to help her get her head on straight. That’s what she’d been thinking anyway.

Now she was hiding behind a nurse’s station with one of their crazy black-vein friends banging on a door down the hall. Sam couldn't figure why they'd be doing that. She didn’t have to wait long for an answer. A baby started crying from behind the door, and Sam felt her blood run cold.

She had to do something. But what? For all she’d told Dean that they weren’t human, she wasn’t so sure. She didn’t want to shoot anyone if she didn’t have to. 

Besides that, a shot would alarm Dean wherever he was in the building and surely attract any other crazies that were still loitering about the surrounding areas. 

Alternatively, she could just go at them with her hands , but that seemed ill advised at this point since she didn’t know if they themselves were contagious or not, and she didn’t have a whole lot of blunt objects on her.

Luckily she just had to wait a minute apparently as the crazed man dropped to the tiled floor like a bag of bricks. She stood, approaching carefully through the hallway lined with corpses. The baby kept wailing as she reached the door, nudging the fresh body with her foot. 

“Is he dead?” A man’s voice from the other side of the door. The crying seemed to calm a bit as he spoke. 

“Yeah.” Sam relaxed her hand, lowering her gun a bit. “Yeah, he’s dead.”

Sam shook her head a bit, ridiculously grateful there was an adult to go with the baby. “It’s safe to come out now. I’m FBI.” Sam pulled out her FBI badge and tossed it down before kicking it under the door. 

Hardly a second later the lock clicked and a man was hovering in the doorway, complete with baby sling and all. 

“Help us, please.” His eyes shined with desperate tears, and Sam felt at a loss for words. She just nodded. 

“This way.” She gestured back down the hall, toward where she knew Dean and the officer were. She picked up her badge before leading the way. 

The baby- a girl if the pink blanket was anything to go by- was still fussing a bit but mostly had quieted down, seemingly content to rest. 

Sam marveled at the size of her. She wondered if she was ever that small. She must have been, once. Sam couldn't help but wonder if her dad had ever carried her around in a sling like that, letting her rest over his chest, hear his heartbeat. She wondered if her mother had. 

Thoughts of her own infancy were quickly brushed aside as she found the hall she had split apart from the others at. It wasn’t difficult to find Dean from there. She could hear the clink and shuffle and soft thumps of Dean moving about a room from just a little further into the hospital.

“Dean.” 

His head poked out from one of the doorways a moment later and he waved her over, but not before she caught the way his face hardened at the sight of the man and child behind her.

Kids always complicated things. 

“The Doc said it was gonna be a difficult labor, but Janie, she really stepped up. Then the twister hit. The power went out, but Janie just kept going.” He paced back and forth as he spoke, bouncing the pink bundle in his arms lightly. 

“No Drugs.” His voice wavered a bit, “Janie- she didn’t want any. Something about natural childbirth being beautiful. She pushed out this little dewdrop like she was nothing.” He gave a watery smile as he gazed down at his daughter. It shattered a second later. “Then Janie started bleeding.”

Sam pursed her lips. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the little girl’s sleeping face. 

A sense of familiarity and foreboding washed over her. She wasn’t sure what to make of it, but she desperately wanted to take Dean and run away. She shook her head slightly and twisted a loose curl around her finger. No matter how much she wanted to run away, they had to help these people. This was her fault anyway for unleashing the Darkness to save Dean.

Mike continued. “You’d think they’d know how to stop a thing like that.” 

“Mike, I’m so sorry.” Nickerson said.

Sam was relieved when Dean interrupted the morbid atmosphere settling over the exam room. 

“Can you tell us what happened here?” 

Mike gave a stunted nod, “I went outside- after. A whole truckload of ‘em pulled up.”

“The road crew?” Sam asked.

He nodded, a bit more confidently this time. “They got out, and they didn’t say nothin’. They just started tearing folks apart like they were possessed. I ran back in for this little one and hid. I could hear them though. Doctors, nurses, patients, they didn’t care.” He dropped his gaze back down to his baby, exposing his neck to Sam. 

There were faint black lines climbing up the side of it. Sam didn’t wrestle with the mixed emotions the situation gave her. She cleared her throat. 

Dean looked at her, understanding well enough that she was trying to get him to notice something. She nodded at Mike. Dean looked, but didn’t see. 

“You said the road crew went nuts. Any of them come after you?”

He nodded again, barely noticeable as he had resumed bouncing the baby. “Yeah, a few of them.”

Sam looked to Dean again, a cold resignation settling over his face. 

“Did any of them cut you? Bleed on you?” 

Mike seemed to realize the direction of the questions then. He looked up, met her eyes. 

“They did.” He sounded scared. 

Nickerson chose that moment to speak up. “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

“Saying that whatever this is, whatever’s going on here, it might be transmittable.” Dean said. 

Sam was simply grateful he’d said it instead of her having to. How do you tell a man with a newborn child that his baby is going to be an orphan?

“We don’t even know what this is! Now you’re saying it can be passed on?” Nickerson asked.

“He’s right.” Mike said, cutting short whatever defense Nickerson might have been trying to build. “I can feel it. Inside. Something’s happening to me.”

“How long ago were you attacked?” Dean asked. 

“Three, four hours? The real question is how much longer before I become like them?”

Mike took a deep breath, struggling to wrap his mind around his predicament. It was clear no one had the answer he needed. Instead he simply walked out of the room, and sat on a bench in the hallway. He cooed and whispered quietly to his daughter. 

Sam couldn’t watch, mind racing. There had to be a way to save him, right? He was the only one that little girl had left. 

Dean’s gruff voice snapped her from her thoughts. 

“You know where I stand.”

“You can’t be serious- If he goes out there he’ll die. Those things will kill him.” Nickerson argued.

Dean wasn’t having any of that. “So what? We wait in here for him to kill us? That’s a plan.” He spun away from Nickerson to walk over to Sam. 

Sam pulled her fingers through her hair with a sigh. This was the best she could come up with for now. “We lock him up. These things have a shelf life.” She thought of the one at the closet door.

Dean was not fond of her idea if the glare was anything to go by. 

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing.” He said.

Yeah. That’s about what she expected from Dean. Instead of focusing on him, Sam turned her eyes to Nickerson. 

“She’s right.” Nickerson said, eyes meeting Sam’s. 

“Excuse me?” Dean was whipping his head back and forth between the women.

“We lock him up. We find a cure. This is a hospital, right?” Nickerson said. She sounded a bit challenging as she looked over to Dean. Sam resisted smiling at the sight of the rookie cop throwing down a proverbial gauntlet. 

“Last I checked we weren’t doctors, and call it a hunch, but I don’t this is gonna be in any of the medical books.” Dean was angry. She knew from the way his voice got tight and his jaw clenched as he spoke. 

Sam was about to speak, to reign him in before he blew up, when Mike walked back in.  
“I didn’t open up that closet door to find a cure.” He said.

Dean deflated, took a step back. His voice was firm, but genuinely sorry when he spoke.

“Look, Mike. I’m sorry, but this is untenable.” He held up his arms. The motion caught somewhere between being defensive and pleading. 

“I know.” Mike looked to his daughter, seemingly for strength. His shoulders squared, “That’s why I thought maybe we could make a deal.”

His eyes wandered the room, meeting each of their gazes in turn. 

“I’ll go find somewhere quiet. Lay low until this is all over, and you.” He took a shuddering breath. “You save my little girl.”

Dean nodded. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

“Thank you, but I wasn’t talking to you.” Mike turned toward Nickerson. “I know you. I’ve seen you in church since you were knee high.” He moved to hand her the baby. 

Nickerson tried to force a smile as she tentatively took the now wailing infant from him.

“Thank you.” Mike left quickly, all but running away. 

Sam closed her eyes. Tried to imagine how painful this all was for him. And she caused it. 

“Why do I feel like that’s gonna bite us in the ass?” Dean said as he watched Mike’s retreat.

Sam chuckled. Her eyes found Nickerson and the baby as Dean asked, “You good?”

“Aces.” Nickerson looked nervous and clearly ill at ease with the child in her arms. Sam turned away. Better Nickerson than her. That’s when a light caught her eye through the blinds.

“Alright, let’s gear up.”

“That might be tricky.” Sam gestured Dean over to peer out of the blinds. A large black truck pulled up in front of the hospital and several men filtered out. 

Sam saw Dean’s jaw clench and felt her own reflexive twitch in return. They were pretty thoroughly fucked, and Dean had that Hell or High Water look in his eyes.

He turned away from the window abruptly and threw open his duffel, rifling through for various guns and their coordinating ammo. 

“What are you doing? What-” Nickerson turned to Sam, anxiety creeping into her voice. “What is he doing?”

Sam reached for her to comfort her, hesitated, then let her hand hover in the air before she gestured lamely to Dean. “Dean-”

“We made a promise, Sam.” His eyes flitted briefly to the infant in Nickerson’s arms. 

“A promise to do what, exactly? Charge out there, guns blazing, get ourselves killed? Do we even know how to kill these things?” Sam asked. 

“This is madness.” 

Sam bit her tongue, half expecting Dean to make a quip himself, but instead all he said was, “ No. That out there is madness.”

“Save Mike’s baby, but shoot Mike. How does that make sense?” Nickerson mocked at him. Sam approved of her sass. 

“Dean, we can just wait for them to die.” She reasoned.

“And how long is that? When they infect others how long is that? No.” He rounded the table, the rigid set of his shoulders telling her more than his words that there was no room for argument. “We stay here, and that baby dies.”

He deflated slightly only to scrub at his face with his left hand. “Sam, we did this.” He turned to her and Sam couldn’t find words. She wanted to argue with him, but she’d been thinking the same thing. This was their fault. “There’s no other way.” 

His cellphone chose that moment to ring, shattering the tension between the two. 

It was Cas.

Sam wished desperately she could hear him. She wanted to reassure him that the spell worked, that Dean was Saved. She wanted to thank him and hug him and sit the three of them down for a round of hard-earned beers. She wished he was here. She’d have to settle for the sound of his voice.

She walked over, and Dean grudgingly switched to speaker phone. 

“Hey, Cas.” She greeted.

“Sam.” Is all that managed from the other line before Dean cut in. Even then, it was enough. Cas sounded tired, but Sam squashed down the urge to ask him what was wrong. One problem at a time.

“Talk to us about the Darkness.”

There’s a pause before, “Why would I talk about the darkness?”

“Because she’s free.” Sam said. “Removing the Mark, it opened some sort of lock. Dean met her.”

“The Darkness is a woman?”

Well that wasn’t reassuring in the least. Cas didn’t even know if the Darkness had a gender. 

“Doesn’t matter. We were wondering if you could tell us what level of defcon screwed we are.” Dean said.

From the phone only another pause before Cas gave a quick and ambiguous farewell that Sam knew didn’t sit right with either her or Dean. 

No answers from Cas then. Only more questions, more concerns.

“FBI, my ass.” Sam turned to Nickerson only to find she really didn’t care to explain everything. Dean gave her an imploring look, like he was waiting for her to give her The Talk. Sam gave him a look that she hoped definitively said shove it up your ass.

The bundle chose that moment to start fussing, demanding Nickerson’s attention, and effectively saving Sam and Dean from having to explain everything. At least for now. 

She tossed her head back and gave a heavy sigh. Time to argue with Dean. 

“I get it, okay? And we’re going to save the baby. We’re gonna find Cas and stop the Darkness.” She assured.

Dean looked at her like she was speaking in tongues. “What are you talking about?”

“The plan, Dean.”

“We have a plan. Same plan as always. To get out, we go through.”

“Oh, yeah? How’s that been working out for us?” She shot back. 

“Look, we can’t help Cas from some hospital. We can’t protect them,” he gestured to Nickerson and the baby. “Just like I can’t strap on a time machine and tell Cain to shove his Mark up his ass or stop you from releasing the Darkness.”

Sam looked at her feet, pushing away the sting his words brought. A minute ago it had been ‘we’. Not our fault, just mine. 

Dean frowned at her before plowing on. “Now have we made mistakes? Sure. Hell, yeah. And we can analyze every damn one of them when we’re old and farting sawdust and out of this goddamn room! Right now all I can do is protect that kid and get us out of here. So that’s what I’m gonna do.”

Sam shook her head. They were so far removed from what they used to be.

“Dude, when did we start to suck at this?” 

“What?” She looked up to meet Dean’s baffled face. 

“We need to change, or all of our bullshit is just gonna keep repeating itself.” She said, willing him to understand her. 

“What the hell are you talking about?” Dean asked, looking more and more bewildered by the second. 

Sam took a deep breath, steeling herself for whatever her brother’s response to this might be. “This- this whole ‘kill first, ask questions maybe later’ thing. It’s bullshit. Hunting things- we’re good at that. Hell, we rule at that, but that’s only half the bumper sticker.”

“I am trying to save that baby.” Dean was bristling at her, irritation rising up over confusion.

So she kept going. “What about them?” She gestured back to the window. 

“You mean the people trying to kill us?”

“I mean the people who are sick, Dean. They need help. Who’s saving them?”

Dean fixed her with a hard stare. “Sam, monsters don’t get saved.” 

“We don’t know that they’re monsters, Dean! We don’t know that there isn’t a way to cure them.” 

“I can think of one.” He held up his gun, practically waving it in her face. 

Sam could feel heat rising in her cheeks. “There is always a cure. Always. We just need to actually want to find it.” She made sure the unspoken accusation was understood, and felt satisfied at the way Dean pursed his lips.

“So what the hell is your plan?” He asked, clearly not happy with the turn in the conversation. 

“Get her and the baby to the car and then somewhere safe.” She said.

Dean fixed her with a perfect deadpan. 

“Brilliant, Sammy. And how do you want to do that without shooting those guys?”

“You don’t worry about them.”

“No.”

“Yes.” She insisted.

“Sam. No. Absolutely not.” Dean persisted. “No way.”

“Dean, you said it yourself. We caused this.”

(I caused this.)

Dean relented, caught between anger and misery. 

“We have to fix it. You save them. You do what you do best.” She put her hand over his chest, willed him to do as she asked. “Let me do what I do.”

She was going to fix this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINAL SEASON APPROACHES! AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH
> 
> Enjoy and Comment!

**Author's Note:**

> So this is part of my own girl Sam universe. Season 11 is where things are going to start to depart dramatically from canon so this is where the fun begins. I really had fun writing this. Please leave comments and kudos! They mean the world to me! Happy New Year!


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